Members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) allegedly opened fire on “schoolgirls” chanting anti-regime slogans on Wednesday.
The IRGC is Iran’s most brutal weapon against protesters outraged at the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of the country’s morality police. Unrest has been most prevalent in the Kurdish regions of Iran, and the regime is now preparing for a brutal crackdown on Sanandaj, the region’s capital.
Regime enforcers have killed hundreds of demonstrators across the country since Amini’s death last month. The Hengaw Organization for Human Rights says IRGC troops killed five and wounded 400 with “machine gun fire and other violence” throughout the northern Kurdish region this week.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi are now overseeing the crackdown on Sanandaj, where the IRGC have already used live ammunition against protesters. Iranian warplanes were also spotted arriving at the city’s airport.
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Violence against protesters has served to intensify unrest across the county, with more innocents being killed at the hands of the regime.
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The protests first erupted after the police killing of Amini, who was arrested in September for improperly wearing her hijab. Morality police took her into custody and she was later released in a coma. She soon died in a hospital.
Also a source of outrage is the alleged killing of 17-year-old Nika Shakamari. Iranian police followed her away from a protest where she set fire to her hijab. She was then killed, and authorities claim she fell off of a roof. Family members say her injuries were not consistent with that story, however.
“Women like Mahsa and Nika have become the faces and hashtags of this movement because their cold and violent deaths clearly illustrate the brutality of this regime against all of its constituents, but also underscores how this regime is fixated on controlling and repressing young women who are only asking for their basic freedoms,” Foreign Desk editor-in-chief Lisa Daftari told Fox News Digital on Tuesday.
Iranian authorities sought to conceal news of Shakamari’s death for nine days. Police ultimately removed her body from a morgue and buried in a rural area against her family’s wishes.
